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Day: 25 August 2009

Poodle Who? A Kitsch Touch to Creative Grooming

If you type in Google “jeff koons made in heaven“, you will find a site with lots of images that I dare watch but not post to this blog (yet). Apart from those, Jeff Koons, the famous American artist, is renowned for giant puppies, tulips, and other oversized objects and topiary sculptures, often multicolour, like the Bilbao Puppy.

Koons’s art has already influenced Damien Hirst, and, to judge by The Telegraph report, the dog groomers couldn’t remain indifferent either. Throwing caution to the wind, they went ahead of Koons and turned real poodles into pandas, dragons, peacocks, and other pretty monsters that would be a nice addition to the American artist’s work.

I cannot think of a dog owner who never tried to dress their four-legged companion in a sweater, put sunglasses or a cap on them, get them drive a car or similar. A skateboard-riding bulldog was an overnight YouTube sensation. But making your poodle a camel is, well, different.

So, what do you think? Without asking if this is art or not, or is it right to groom a dog like this, my question is: do you do anything similar? Or would you?

Image credits: The Telegraph and ArtThrob.

Some Flickr Pointers

I noticed that Flickr link in my Lijit widget wasn’t working. I corrected it but I thought I’d use the opportunity to give you a peek at my “private” Flickr life.

I started using the site in 2007, partly because of Robin Hamman‘s paeans. I’ve loved photography already but as with blogging it took overcoming a certain inner hurdle to start putting the photos up for all to see.

I love Flickr; in May, during Futuresonic Festival, I even delivered a talk on Online Photography; and before then in January I wrote a lengthy article on how (not) to use Flickr. Working as a Social Media Manager, I notice, of course, that nobody uses Flickr as they “should”, myself including. But it’s good to strive to use it better.

Flickr is an ocean, deep, beautiful, and sometimes dangerous. They upped security and safety levels, and you can always ask to take you “to kittens” but chances are, you will keep looking. I don’t think it will be totally bad if a young person stumbles upon the imagery of sexual kind. My concern is whether or not there will be a sensible adult with them to explain things.

As for me, I was amazed when last year I got followed by the multitudes of leather fans. I love leather clothes, so this season I don’t even have to try to be fashionable. But to have your own self-portrait in leather pants and hand-made sweater accumulating views and comments was something different.

My experience of Flickr has been great, all the more so because for the second time a photo I took was included in Schmap City Guide. In 2007, one photo was featured in Schmap Liverpool Guide. In 2009, another photo (which you will not find in my personal photostream) got included in Schmap Manchester Guide. It was made at one of the events where I went as my company’s employee, and it is credited to the company.

So, by way of giving a few pointers to what you’re going to find if you visit my Flickr:

All sets, and particularly Knitting and Lake District

Carmarthen Cameos (South Wales)

Manchester

Bolton (a Lancashire town in Greater Manchester county)

London

North Wales

Castles (only Welsh so far)

Museums, Art Galleries, Exhibitions (Beck’s Canvas, Liverpool Walker Art Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum)

Concert and Music Events (Tina Turner, Barbra Streisand, Toshio Iwai)

Russian Places (some of my childhood places)

York (I loved the city, will go again some time)

Yorkshire: Leeds and Scarborough

Lancashire: Oldham, Blackburn and Blackpool

Merseyside: Liverpool and Southport

Cheshire: Chester, Altrincham, Warrington, and Stockport

Midlands: Birmingham

Public Lectures (Slavoj Zizek rules!)

Festivals: Futuresonic, Manchester International Festival, Text Festival

The photo above is Cleopatra’s Needle from London 2004 set.

Blogger Julia and the Typewriter

Some of you will instantly recognise a paraphrase of the title of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa in the post’s title. I remember reading it in about 1998 in Moscow. I was a second year student, and my reading would often occur on the tube. At first I couldn’t get my head round the different stories that weaved together into a narrative; some of them were unfinished, and it didn’t quite make sense. Then suddenly I realised that those unfinished pieces were the extracts from scripts. Once I realised this, I became fascinated with the novel. It was there, as well, that I picked up on the expression “legion is their name“. Evidently, I didn’t read my Bible very well.

The post is about the picture; or actually about a typewriter you can see at the bottom right corner of the image (it is a collage, lovingly created by my mother – thank you!) The typewriter is quite old, should be well over 30 years, if not more. I didn’t get to use a computer until 1997; it took me until 2000 to get connected to the Internet. But I learnt the “qwerty” long before I got to use the PC’s keyboard, and in that the typewriter was indispensable. In fact, as I write this, I can smell the typewriter ribbon. The typewriter ribbon always had this strange smell: it was warm and homely but had a lead undertone to it, unequivocally reminding that it was used to type, i.e. imprint on paper.

These days I don’t look at the keyboard when I type; and I type fast, too. But with this typewriter it would sometimes be a nightmare. The keys would occasionally jam. This meant that I had to take the top off and unjam them. This meant in turn that my fingers and nails would be covered in ink. My fingers were also too small and delicate, so they would either get in between the keys, or their tips would hurt after some 15 minutes of exercise.

For some time I was impressed by the scene you are going to see in the video below. This is the first part (the second you can watch on YouTube) of a very famous and well-loved Russian cartoon – Film, Film, Film (1968). When I watch it today, I am almost sure I can see references to Sergei Eisenstein in the Director; and the scriptwriter, when he hides in the tube, brings to mind Marcello Mastroianni in La Città Delle Donne (1980). Of course, if there is any parallel to be found in this, it should mean that both Fyodor Khitruk and Federico Fellini were drawing from the same source for that tube metaphor.

But – back to typewriters – for a while I was fascinated with the opening scene of the cartoon, in which the scriptwriter tears the paper into pieces each time the Muse suddenly deserts him. I wasn’t typing all the time, mind you, but I would take the piece of paper out of the typewriter whenever I made an error. I calmed down when I realised I could keep typing and correct it later. Yet undoubtedly I fancied myself in the same kind of creative throes which were compounded by the awkward typewriter’s keys.

error: Sorry, no copying !!